In a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drive, data tracks are written in a partially overlapped manner to increase data density and overall drive capacity. An SMR drive may be divided into multiple shingle zones according to one approach of formatting an SMR drive. In such a case, each shingle zone has a user data area and a guardband area. Due to the overlapping nature of the written tracks, a guardband may be necessary to separate two adjacent shingle zones to prevent data corruption.